Writer, reader, music needer.
Currently working retail, and somehow surviving.
Author of young adult fiction.
Pisces and tattoo enthusiast.
Finding happiness within the darkness is my aesthetic.
Twitter & Instagram: justingrey22

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Dark Side Of The American Dream

| Now Playing: Without You by Lana Del Rey |

Summer time is nice and hot,And my life is sweet like vanilla is.Gold and silver line my heart,But burned into my brain are these stolen images.Stolen images, baby, stolen images.Can you picture it?Babe, the life we could've lived.

Hello, hello,

Can you hear me?

I can be your china doll,

If you like to see me fall.

Boy you're so dope,

You're love is deadly.

Tell me life is beautiful,

They all think I have it all.

I've nothing without you,

All my dreams and all the lights mean,

Nothing without you.

___________________________________________________________

I know, I know. I'm complete trash for having a Lana Del Rey song in the NP for the third time in a row, I'm aware. But she's just so damn good and this song has literally been stuck in my head the past couple of days, that I literally had no choice. Every time I've been in the car, I've alternated between Million Dollar Man and Without You. Lana's Born To Die album is just so fucking good, I can't escape it even if I wanted to. Now that that's out of the way, onto our regularly scheduled shit show.

Let's start with the positives, or as I like to call it, Sunday. That's where my positives' peaked, and it's been a runoff of toxic sludge ever since.

Sunday was really good. I set out a personal goal to just write on my last day off before the work week, and that's exactly what I did. I actually wrote a whopping ten pages. I was pretty impressed with myself. I'm finally, and trying to keep up the momentum, churning out this second book on a more regular basis. I've needed to for a while now. It's been over a year since I started the second book and the first book's publishing and subsequent release took over so much that I didn't really have a whole lot of time to write in the second book. But I suppose that's the price of being a writer, and a self-published one at that.

Monday, meaning work, is when things plummeted. As they tend to do lately, when work is involved. During the morning meeting, we learned that all of us were blitzing out the Back to School freight. All of it. And all of it, was ten pallets. That's literally so insane, I still can't believe we finished it all. Of course, it took us over two hours to get everything done. Not to mention everything else we had to get done that day. And to top it all off, I checked my departments price changes, and I had over 3500. 3500. I didn't know what to do with myself, so I just laughed. Because there was no way I was going to have time to get to them after having over two hours of my day taken away from me because of BTS. There was just no way in hell. The only real good that came out of the day was when I decided to start posting my novel on my old stomping grounds, good ol' Young Writers Society. I remembered how much feedback I used to get on my writing, and we all know that's the one thing I've been dying to devour since my novel's release. I suppose it's a lot easier to take in single chapters, most reading is. So that was literally the only plus.

Things didn't really get better with yesterday. I woke up to five notifications on YWS, which floored me that I had such an active response on just posting the Prologue from my book. So that was wonderful. I didn't get to read everything and soak it in in detail until much later, but waking up to that was nice. Another benefit I forgot to mention from leaving the weekend was my sleep. I stayed up a little longer Sunday night to see if that helped my sleeping, and it did. I'd love more than six and half hours of sleep, but apparently, my body just can't handle it. Anyway, work wasn't too bad and nothing really special or crazy happened, except that I literally cast out all my fucks and wore a shirt to work that's not approved. I wanted to be comfortable and my 90's cartoon nostalgia shirt just needed to be kept on from slumber. So I did. Luckily, I think I got away with it only because it's blue. It doesn't have a collar like we're supposed to don, but it was good enough from me, and honestly, all that they were getting from me.

Mawmaw made Poor Mans for dinner, much to my excitement. With her famous mashed potatoes, it was a lovely dinner. I'm only mentioning this because it was one of the few things that has been enjoyable about the past few days, so I'm reveling in them when I'm presented the opportunity. It was hella good on every level, so I kept on metaphorically dancing (I'm sorry, I'm just a sucker for that classic No Doubt song). The responses from Young Writers Society weren't bad, and I'm really good at taking constructive criticism, especially when I'm so proud of this body of work, more than anything I've ever created, so I don't sweat the small stuff. Plus, the book is already published, so it doesn't matter what I'm advised to "work on". But feedback was what I wanted and that's what I got. I actually noticed some things to take away from the reviews and comments, which is always a good thing. I just hate that you have to gain "points" by reviewing other's work just to post your own. It's a definite flaw in their system, but whatever works to get people looking at your stuff.

Today was just enough. Enough in pretty much every aspect of my life. One plus being is I didn't stay too much after work and we had Taco Bell for dinner. I can't remember the last time I'd had the delectably sinful delights from Taco Bell, but it was a nice reminder for how much I really need to lose weight. But the time though, where is it? Price changes consumed my work day, as I still had a fair amount upon coming in. I knew I was going to be doing them all day, but what I wasn't counting on was the fact that some of them, miraculously, became late halfway through the day. I wasn't even aware that such a thing could happen, but I know now I suppose. I was going to stay until 5, or even 6 or 7 to get more of these "late" ones done, but Sean (My assistant manager) told me via a text from April R to go ahead and head home, and he'd try to work out some help for the prices changes tomorrow. Hopefully he's true to his word because I still have over 2000. There's no way I'm going to be finished with them by the end of the week, let alone the three day time period we're "supposed" to have on them.

Yet another thing to siphon my good feelings has been the latest in Trump Tweets Bullshit. Not allowing transgender individuals in the military and banning them from further serving is just absolutely garbage. I'm not here for it, and talking politics in my family is just dangerous. My grandparents hold such...I won't say strict, let's say rigid, republican standards that it's hard to reason with them, more so my grandpa, who let's just save time and say holds some still rather radical views on things that shouldn't be radical anymore. It got me really heated today when we were talking about it (With my dad, who made a surprise visit), and it just really got me down. I'm so tried of feeling so oppressed all the time. And I already have enough self-doubt and demonic depression holding me down without getting added artillery from our so called triumphant leader. I've just had enough this week, and I'm so ready for the weekend. I'm hoping to do something with Benzo for her birthday, only I don't know what. Even if it's just spend time together, I'm all for it. I just need a reprieve.

Speaking of reprieves, Big Brother is about to come on. So I'm going to go soak into that for a good while before I possibly do some writing, possibly do some reading, I don't know. I'm going to be up after it's over is all I know. I'm too wound up to wind down at the moment.